Botched execution #3: Emanuel Hammond

11.39 EST, January  27 2011: Emanuel Hammond is executed. Hammond closes his eyes, and then re-opens them later. He is the third person to be killed using unapproved drugs from Acton-based firm Dream Pharma.

Professor Sheri Johnson, who watched particularly intently because she knew there were doubts over the British thiopental’s efficacy, said “he closed his eyes perhaps ten seconds after the drugs started. But then, some time later, he opened them again”. Professor Johnson added that this was quite unlike three thiopental executions she had seen before, when the prisoners closed their eyes very quickly and remained “totally still”, apparently in a coma. Josh Green, a reporter with the Gwinnett Daily Post, confirms that Hammond first closed, and then re-opened his eyes some time after receiving the thiopental, while Jill Rand, a Florida nurse who became Hammond’s pen friend, said she saw him move his lips.

Emanuel's execution was delayed for four and a half hours by the US Supreme Court to consider whether to order it permanently halted, in light of new evidence concerning Georgia's hitherto-undisclosed execution of Brandon Rhode on September 27, 2010. 

The leading expert on lethal injection as an execution method, Dr Mark Heath, filed a sworn declaration stating that in his opinion the sodium thiopental sold by Dream Pharma to the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) may have “lacked efficacy”. In the opinion of Dr Mark Heath, this would have resulted in excruciating pain: “If the thiopental was inadequately effective Mr Rhode’s death would certainly have been agonizing,” he declared. “There is no dispute that the asphyxiation caused by pancuronium and the caustic burning sensation caused by potassium would be agonizing in the absence of adequate anesthesia.” 

Reprieve’s Director, Clive Stafford Smith, provided pro bono representation to Emanuel Hammond many years ago, in his first challenge to his sentence of death.

The Managing Director of Dream Pharma, who knew that his drugs would be used to kill initially refused all cooperation with Reprieve’s effort to mitigate the damage caused by these sales but has since ceased exports of sodium thiopental destined for use in executions.

Reprieve’s Director Clive Stafford Smith said: 

“It is shocking that Britain has allowed a fly-by-night company in the back of a driving academy to export these drugs. Apparently they were not stored, exported or used in a proper way, so that the prisoners are dying excruciating deaths. The British government must initiate an immediate inquiry into how this can happen.

“I knew Emanuel Hammond, and surely even those who wished him dead would not advocate that society inflict needless pain and suffering on him, on top of the 23 years he spent on death row.”

To learn how healthcare professionals can help stop execution by lethal injection please contact Maya Foa.

Click here to return to World Day Against the Death Penalty: top five botched executions this year.